The 22 minute time loop really killed it for me, and only with hindsight do I realise why. In Majora’s Mask, the timeloop existed not just for atmosphere, but also to be exploited: you have an inordinate task to perform in three days, better make the most of the Goddess’ good graces. Plan out every moment of your day and find better ways to do right by others so they can do right by you. Like tapping a dial to ensure it gives an accurate reading, and contemporaneously with scoring and rankings in other games (though this modus operandi is becoming uncommon^), I recall this being the slight bit of pressure I needed to make me the best Link – and by extension the best player – I could possibly be.

Outer Wilds, despite its stricter time limit, feels entirely incommensurate with the above approach: leading to me being blindsided by its eventual tonal shift. I assume the gradual revealing of the horror of the history of the solar system was intended to eventually inspire trepidation and ennui, whereas I was becoming more and more cavalier so as to optimise around a forced restart every 22 minutes, going around with the timeloop as an immutable divine crutch. Was I lashing out against the whims of the universe? Not really, by then I was filling in a checklist.

I guess I played it wrong? In my defence, I wouldn’t call it the breakthrough of puzzle gaming that reviews had suggested to me it was. Having a majority of puzzles be “Find a way to get to X” in a game with fully simulated physics sounds like a slam-dunk until you realise how ancillary the physics actually are: trying and failing to wrangle the ship into places only to later discover some menial solution somewhere else, sometime later is really sleight-of-hand, not discovery. Two decades ago, Riven set the benchmark by challenging players to ask the right questions, not just find the right answers. Outer Wilds is just a more robust conjuring of an outdated pedagogy.

^Yes, I blame FromSoft.